


In the holding pen

by imsfire



Series: Droid Week 2018 [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, B1 battle droids, Gen, OC death, battle droid angst, brotherhood in wartime, brutal injustice of peace, brutal injustice of war, seriously massively ansgty, warning for execution of prisoners, warning for implied mass murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-24 02:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15620820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: A group of decommissioned B1 battle droids await their fate at the end of the Clone Wars.





	In the holding pen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skitzofreak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/gifts), [gloriouswhisperstyphoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/gifts).



They weren’t batch-mates; some of them were a year or more older than B1-227 and the youngest was seven whole years his junior.  They had no reason to stand together in storage, or to walk together when they were told to transfer into the floater, or to assemble in a holding pen.  They didn’t know one another.  But they _did_.  They were all the same; same model, same programming.  They didn't need to know one another, to understand one another completely.

Every one of them had served to the best of his ability.  Their best had not been good enough, in the end; but they’d still gone on to the last.  Programmed to do no less.  It was a simple thing in which to take pride, fulfilling the parameters of your programming properly.  Roger roger.

In the absence of any organic commanding officer they’d taken to deferring authority to the only B2 in the group.  B2-735D stood a head taller than the rest of the crew and would once have been an awe-inspiring figure of a droid; before the removal of his right forelimb and the fitting of the restraining bolt every droid prisoner in the storage unit wore as a matter of course.  Even now, slowed and crippled as he was, 735D was impressive.  People really looked at a B2; they had dignity.  A quality that 227 knew he lacked.  No-one looked twice at a B1 like him.  No-one cared that he’d served in a hundred engagements, from Geonosis 2 till the Retreat from Kaller.  Served and functioned at the top end of required parameters, with distinction.

Like all the rest of them.  Not batch-mates, perhaps, but brothers nonetheless, model-mates.  Designed to serve.  Roger roger.

At the end of the holding pen was a building, a door, and a sound, beyond the door.

There were some three hundred droids in the pen; bolted, waiting patiently.  227 knew the only reason they’d been reactivated at the end of the conflict was because it was easier to move them under their own volition than to stack and haul their ungainly forms when powered-down.

The group shuffled forward, safe under 735D’s shadow.  It was easy to feel protected, next to a B2.  At the front of the crowd, one by one, droids passed through the door.  As they got closer, 227 could see an organic, just outside, reaching up and snapping off the restraining bolt from each one as they went by with a hand-held de-magnetiser.  So inside this building, whatever happened there, they’d be free. 

“I don’t got a good feeling about this,” warbled B1-383, his immediate neighbour.

“If they’re taking off our bolts how come they put them back on us in the first place?” B1-461 wanted to know.

“They’re doing what they’ve decided, like always,” 227 reassured them. “We just got to do our jobs.”

“Roger roger.”

“Like we always did.”

“Like we always did, yeah – Yeah, like we do, that’s us, we do our jobs, yeah - Roger roger.” 

“Like we always do.  Like we always will.”

“Yeah – _yeah_ \- Roger roger…”

The whole little crowd in his vicinity was chorusing it now, soft droid whispers, their vocabulisers fluty-sounding, nasal from lack of use. 

“We’ve never let them down,” said 383.

“That’s right, yeah - Plenty of us got smashed and shot up but we never let the masters down.”

“Roger-roger – Yeah, he’s right.”

They shuffled forward steadily.  The building was almost on top of them now, its durasteel external wall towering over even B2-735D.  The bursts of noise each time the door opened were intense.  It reminded 227 of a fire-fight, but with the blaster-fire bursts concentrated somehow into a single steady rush of sound.

He could see a fierce red light within, as well.

“We’ve never let them down,” 227 repeated.

“Roger roger.”

The light reminded him of being on board ship in the Mid-watch, when lighting was powered down to infra-red for the benefit of sleeping organics.  Like being back up in space, on his way to another battle.  It was fiery, but also comforting.  Home would look like that. 

“Perhaps we’re being recommissioned,” he said.

“Recommissioned, yes – yeah, recommissioned, that’s gotta be it.”

“We’ve never let them down.”

“Roger roger.”

“They know a good thing when they’ve got one.”

“Roger roger.”

“Droids are the best.”

“Yeah – Yeah! – We’re loyal and hardworking and we _never_ complain.”

“We just do our jobs – Like we always did – Yeah – Yeah - Yeah.”

“We are the best!”

“Yeah, we are the best!”

“We always do our jobs!”

“Yeah, we always do our jobs.”

“We’ll obey our next orders.”

“Even if they’re _really_ dumb.”

“Roger roger.”

“We’ve never let them down.”

“Yeah, we’ve never let them down.”

“Roger roger.”

By now they were near the front of the line.  227 and the droids around him were the last in the holding pen.  He could see how up ahead his fellow droids were being pushed into the gap between two sets of chest-plate-high electro-fencing, so that they had to pass forward one by one into a narrow funnel leading up to the door.  The organic – a tired-looking human male in coveralls – was reaching through the fence wires to lock on to the bolts and flip them away from each droid’s chassis.

One by one, one by one, they went forward.

“What if we’re not recommissioned?” 461, sounding nervous.

“Then it’ll be something else.  There’s always _something_.”

“They’ve got something useful for us.  Otherwise why do they want us here at all?”

“We’ve never let them down.”

“Yeah! – Yeah, that’s right.”

“It’s not our way.”

“Roger roger – Roger roger.”

735D went forward, sidling awkwardly in the confined space.  His bolt was unlatched and 227 saw that the human was tossing all the bolts into a huge case behind him.  There were a lot more bolts in the case than he’d seen droids pass through the door ahead of him.  The red light glowed, fiery-warm, on all the little knobs of metal, piled up there.

“Thank you,” said 735D courteously to the human, and went forward.  The door opened and shut; admitting him, cutting him off.  The red light, the vast roaring noise. 

461 went next.  The chorus of little voices around 227 was getting smaller now.

“We’ve never let them down,” he said.  He had to keep reminding them, as their voices got fewer, as it got stranger and somehow colder out here in the holding pen. “We never will let them down!”

“It’s not our way,” came the response from 383.

“We’re the droids, we’re the best!”

“Yeah, we’re the best!”

“Roger roger – Roger roger.”

“We always do our jobs!”

“Yeah, we always do our jobs.”

“We’ll obey our next orders.”

“That’s right, we will.”

“Roger roger.”

383 shuffled into the narrows between the fencing.  As his bolt was plucked off he turned and nodded to 227. “Roger roger,” he said again.

The door opened and he went through, into the light and the roaring.

589 went next, and then 172, the youngest of the group.

227 was alone.  He stepped forward, into the little aisle.  He was no longer at all sure there was anything good ahead for him, behind the door.  “We are the droids, we always do our best,” he said to the human as they pulled off his restraining bolt and threw it in the case with all the rest.  They didn’t respond. “We’ve never let you down.”

“Yeah, yeah…” said the human, totally unengaged. “Pass on through, come on now, old-timer.” They stuck their arm through the wires again and gave him a push.  Or perhaps it was a pat.  227 could remember that sometimes people patted droids.

The door opened, ahead.  Red light, red roaring, ahead.

“I always do my job,” 227 said, walking towards it. “I’ll obey my next orders.” The red threshold.  He stepped over. “Roger roger,” he said, to the roaring and the fire.

The door closed again behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a brilliant prompt from @skitzofreak, and also in part by the "Salve Regina" scene at the end of the opera "Dialogues of the Carmelites" by Poulenc.  
> For Droid Celebration Week on tumblr, for the Day Four theme "Soldier".


End file.
